For the most part, Betabeat follows the New York Times style guide, in keeping with the rest of Observer Media, which is why we hyphenate the word “start-up.” However, after goading from readers and uncountable number of seconds imposing a hyphen where a hyphen does not want to be, the editors have decided to follow popular style going forward. “Start-up” returns 105 million hits on Google to 118 million for “startup,” and it looks stupid in headlines.
